Are You Guilty of Never Picking Your Valuable Creative Fruit?
Dear Friends,
For most of my life, I have chased the sun, turning my back on winter and fleeing whenever I could. I avoided seeing the good in the autumn and the winter and always looking forward to Spring and Summer and the positivity and high energy that radiates with them.
There is a natural quieting that happens in Autumn and winter in Europe when life and people turn inward. It’s all part of the natural life and death cycle but I was never up for the death part of it, all I wanted was to feel alive! I never wanted the stillness. Like many modern girls and guys, I lost touch with nature, the cycles and all the wonders they bring to us, our nervous systems, inspiration, creativity, minds, and bodies.
Someone once made the observation about me that ‘I don’t pick the fruit’. I remember when he said this, it got my full attention, ‘What do you mean I don’t pick the fruit?’ He went on to explain that I never stop, I just keep moving, new projects, new ideas, new energy and never really stopping to take advantage of all the experiences I have had, what I have created or built.
This year, winter served me, I decided to pick the fruit!! I started a whole new relationship with the cold, the dark and the enforced nurturing and stayed put.
For the first time, I didn’t flee to somewhere sunny and surrendered to slowing down, to staying indoors, to quiet reflection and in this process, I achieved more than I have in a long time. For almost the entire Parisian winter, I stayed put and wrote, pondered, reflected, created and bore my baby YES, YES, YES – my online program.
I kept thinking of myself as a farmer and picking the fruit of my experience that I have always just left hanging on the tree. It was the most beautiful metaphor to go back through my experiences and see where all the learnings were and how I could pass them onto others.
The creative process for me has always been like a birth (even though I have never born a child) and I love in those quiet moments where ideas feel like magic, they come from what appears to be nowhere and out through your pen, even though you have shelved your ‘fruit’ for a long time, it’s there ready and waiting when you decide to stop and pick it.
It’s funny how a sentence, a comment or a remark can change how you do things. This one funny remark had me pondering on it for months after it was made about how I hadn’t picked my fruit, I would walk around muttering to myself ‘where’s my fruit?’, till I started to see it clearly for myself.
Are you guilty of moving on and never taking advantage of your experiences, skills, knowledge, and talents? Love to hear in the comments section your thoughts on picking your fruit.
Enjoy winter if it’s coming to a place near you soon, it’s an incredible change of rhythm and an invitation to bring something to life.
Creativity, love, and light,
Carla
As a fellow Aussie I can so relate Carla, I chased the sun for years too and will escape the winter in Europe for a bit this year too! Love the idea of sitting down to settle and put things together in the quiet of winter as a valuable and necessary part of the creative process. I remember someone once said to me on my travels that they always needed that time after they got home from travelling as their integration time, it was only in the quiet after the ‘sun’ of travelling that they could evaluate the lessons and the meaning of all that they’d seen ‘out’ in the world. Love this topic!
Hi Katie,
yes I know the feeling about getting the lessons later and letting winter leave her magic. I think travel definitely gives us lessons for years to come even if we don’t realise them at the time.
Lisa Clifford wrote in Naples a Way of love ‘When you’re in Naples, walking its streets, singingits songs and tasting the pizza that wafts towards you on the curling tail of some from a wood-fired oven, its as though you’re in a dream. You’re confused, confronted, confounded.
Often it’s only when you leave Naples that you understand the impact it has had on your soul. You’ve left the city behind but its images have branded themselves on to your heart, and hone you least expect it they will come back to you.
Naples is a joyous smile, a generous gesture, a rainbow of tears, city faithful to the simple things in life. It’s dilapidated and dingy, but there is laugher – real pales of it. And it’s when you go home that you realise you’ve taken the laughter with you and can finally, truly hear it.
I think creative fruit is like Naples, sometimes you have to leave it for a while to be able to appreciate it.. Sending you big love Carla x
Love this story! And yes I can relate to this story in multiple ways. Funny enough as I moved to Europe three months ago – I was frightened of the winter, but you gave me something to look forward too Carla! I couldn’t do much photography work the last month as the international move totally absorbed all of my time – but I try to eat from the fruits. and I can tell you some of them are really sweet.
Thank you Carla! Have a wonderful winter!
HI Saskia, welcome to Europe!! So glad you are back. Yes, winter is going to be very productive for you after all that hot weather.. So glad your creative fruits are serving you well. Love to see you in Paris if you are ever here. Big hugs Carla
Hi Carla. I’m a kiwi and I love the way we hunker down in the quieter months – go to bed earlier, read and contemplate more, not feel chores are so urgent to complete. Not picking the fruit however is a major problem with me. It is not being content to enjoy the artistic process, wanting to only make the most beautiful, captivating creation. So I prevaricate, planning, researching and dreaming but not actually picking the fruit, always off on a tangent that avoids the possibility of failure or success. Completely, absolutely frustratingly so willing to promote the talents of others but so unable to reach out and grasp that fruit for myself.
HI Adrienne, lucky you living in New Zealand. I loved my first visit almost two years ago. For some its hard to enjoy the artistic process, just wanting to have a great outcome. What I have learned is that there is magic in the artistic process, there is a whole bunch of inner learning there if we just hang on tight and keep going with it. I learnt go of my outcomes by letting myself ‘play’ and if it turns out great well and good. Don’t think of anything as a failure, just as gathering information and experimenting.. enjoy the Spring Carla x
Ordinarily, yes, I haven’t considered my past experiences or skills in any way useful. Only quite recently did I realize that everything I taught myself in the past few years has actually culminated in the work I now do. Content creation has allowed me to be writer, photographer, designer, crafter, artist, maker of stuff (and now I’m figuring out videography). And that! is really something to be celebrated.
I’ve powered through a neat pile of craft content jobs the past few weeks so that I can wind down the next two months. I really want to use this time to rest, study BJD making, and figure out what I want to reach for in 2020.
Rest! Oh my gosh, my brain really does need to rest.
HI Melissa, wow sounds like really have mastered a ton of stuff. Congratulations, so great to remember all that we are learning and putting out into the world instead of being disappointed by the things we don’t do. Sounds like you are in a wonderful place. Yes 2020 is exciting, a new decade and new projects.. can’t wait. x
Carla I LOVE this!! I am now forever going to be walking around saying where’s my fruit!! So glad you used it to create the gift of YES YES YES for us …a wonderful feast for the soul xxxx
HI Melissa, Love that you love the fruit and you have SO MUCH FRUIT!! You are such a valued member of Yes Yes Yes and thank you for your kind words x
I was just thinking about this today! Am I only content in movement? The answer is probably ‘yes’, funnier is that even as I typed this I made a mistake and as read back on what I’d written I had actually typed THE ANSWER IS PROBABLY REST… funny that. I’m the kinda girl who likes movement, order, answers. Sometimes though, the answer won’t come until we rest and in the resting, the fruit can form. Thanks for the reminder 🙂
Hi Stephanie, yes beautiful observation that in the resting the answers come. It’s such a genius way to get things done!!